The Big Issue 1704/ 09—15 February 2026.

The Big Issue is a fiver (£5) now. I can remember the shock and disbelieve it was £2. Then £2.50…and so on. My sister gave me this copy. She bought it from an Eastern European women from outside Asda. Like most folk that catch her eye and don’t look away, I usually just slip her £2 and say I don’t want the magazine. Win-win. But not for the magazine.

There’s a guy on the bridge at the shopping centre. He’s there every day and plays some musical instrument. I’m going to contradict myself, when he’s not there it’s a man or woman in a sleeping bag. There’s also a woman in a sleeping bag at the start of the shopping centre.

I feel sorry for them because it’s the most boring and shitty job. Day in. Day out. All weathers. Looking miserable and waiting for somebody to fling a coin there way. Of course there’s lots of folk that would deport them or say something like I don’t feel sorry for them because…with a long list of grievances. The SS were very effective in dealing with that sort of problem. Internees had different coloured tags in concentration camps. Work sets you free.  I’m sure ICE in America is not as effective but based on the same principal: Out of sight out of mind.

The Big Issue founder John Bird, (Lord John Bird) holds a birthday cake with candles and 80^th on it. For his birthday he wants to dismantle poverty. But he’s limiting it to child poverty. And hoping the Labour party can get 550 000 children out of poverty by 2030. Bird wonders about the other 95% of children that would remain unhelped. ‘Imagine a new Beveridge dawn’, he writes, that targets the other 4 million children in poverty. And I’d add, their parents.

Like me, Bird was in awe of the impact of the Beveridge Report, in particular because the White Paper was a 1942 bestseller. 600 000 copies were printed and were gone instantly. As he remind us, Nazi Germany and The Soviet Union were still in alliance. It would be another 12 days before Hitler ripped it up with Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of the Soviet Union.  

Trainspotting turns 30 is another feature by Greg Barradale, which allows me to talk about the time I chatted with Irvine Welsh, author to author. My sixty seconds of fame.

The Big Issue has been around for 33 years. It used to be a phenomenon. Where you see every beggar now, you’d see a Big Issue vendor around 1993-94, when the Glasgow office was opened, with other offices in the bigger cities. My mate Hamish used to sell the magazine (RIP). My partner Mary worked in the back office, selling the magazines to vendors. So I read the magazine for free for many years.

Unfortunately Mary was sacked from the Big Issue Bank for something so stupid is still annoys me. She won her tribunal case. But there was no way back. Pettiness and management speak from an Edinburgh 'working-from-home' type was the winner. So I’m unsentimental about the magazine. I’ve seen behind the façade and the egotistical parade of losers. And it isn’t pretty. But no longer make me angry.   

The Big Issue (Scotland) is gone now. This is a watered down and failing venture. Begging on the street has replaced The Big Issue. That saddens me. It shows our collective failure. Of course, I’m too lazy to do anything about it other than to remember there was a time when we tackled poverty. Even failure was better than this dull acceptance and scapegoating.     

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CVBVVGD6